prince for a princess
by Sarapsys
Summary: It's not until Paulina gets all weird and starts dating Fenton, of all people, that it occurs to Dash that maybe he really like likes her.


**AN: aha, getting back in the mindplace to write text fics after doing so many comics is really stretching muscles i haven't used in a while. but i'm hoping there will be several more phanfics on the way...i have a zillion little prompts i'd like to write, anyway. i'm having a little trouble writing many of the characters, especially Danny, but we'll see how it goes. meanwhile, here's a slightly more introspective than usual Dash Baxter. sorry if there are some weird glitches with tense, i changed my mind on whether i wanted it in past or present like six times when drafting this...**

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**prince for a princess**

Sure, they've dated on and off, but that's just what comes with being the quarterback of the Ravens and the captain of the cheerleading squad. The dozen or so kids at the top of the social food chain at Casper High trade boyfriends and girlfriends so often it's like a game of musical chairs, driven on by gossip and spun bottles and touchdowns scored. It's not a huge community, and it's not a huge school, and pickings are a bit slim if you consider yourself above dating down the social ladder.

Which Dash and Paulina do.

So yeah. They got off to a rocky start (he still can't remember exactly how) but once he finally got it through her head that he did _not _in fact collect his toenail clippings, he dated Paulina a couple times. Called her his girlfriend for a few months here and there, asked her to wear his letter jacket on game days (she was always hard to convince on that—apparently it didn't work with her look. She only agreed after he racked up 200 passing yards), took her out to dinners and movies, made out with her on sofas, and once she even let him put his hand up her shirt.

She's kinda bitchy sometimes, and kinda melodramatic sometimes, and kinda both sometimes, but she is also smoking hot and actually knows enough about football to discuss the playoffs (when she isn't in a mood to be bitchy and melodramatic instead). She also loves the same kind of pizza (ham and pineapple) and the same kinds of romantic movies that Dash does, which makes Saturday nights really chill and easy to plan.

(Not that he's ever told _Paulina_ he shares her passion for chick flicks—he's more than fine with letting her believe he tolerates them for her sake out of chivalry.)

But it's not until Paulina gets all weird and starts dating _Fenton_, of all people, that it occurs to Dash that maybe he really _like_ likes her. All of their friends are a little disgusted, if not willing to risk their own reputations by confronting Paulina on the matter, but it's not scorn Dash is feeling at Paulina's rather alarming gaffe.

All he feels is a gripping, queasy anger every time he sees the pair of them, and an almost overwhelming desire to grind Fenton's face into paste. Paulina deserves so much better. She's just way too…_cool_ for an idiot like Fenton. Any guy is going to notice she's hot, but most of the idiots drooling after her don't _know_ her like Dash does.

She's funny, for one thing—always has a good joke or insult on hand, and delivers each one like she's the queen of the world and not just of a midsize high school. And she'll get out the blue and silver pompoms and watch Colts games and rip on the refs with him and his friends, unlike most of the other cheerleaders, who all like football _players_ but many of whom don't really care as much about _football_. And he couldn't ask for a better partner in doubles volleyball; even Kwan, who's his best friend and trains on the team with him, doesn't seem to have her instinct for when he's got the ball under control and when he needs her to cover his back. And the way she flips her hair over her shoulder, impatiently flicking stray strands that seem determined to hang in her face when she's not wearing a barrette, and the way she cocks her hip and plants a fist on it when she's taking someone down, and even the way she talks him into agreeing with her and somehow even being happy with whatever they (she) decide(s) without him even knowing how it happens….

So, even though it's a bit early and might look sort of lame (he probably should have given it a week at least) he texts Paulina the day after she finally comes to her senses and dumps Fenton, asking if she wants to go to the matinee with him this weekend.

_Not interested, _she texts back.

Dash stares at the screen of his cell phone with that crushing feeling in his chest that usually only his dad gives him.

Hurt gives way quickly to anger. Not _interested_? Not that she couldn't, or was busy or something. She didn't even _pretend_ to be busy. Just straight up "not interested". Who the hell does Paulina think she is? Queen of Casper High she might be, but he's right up there with her. She can't just brush him off like he's some second-rate band kid or something. Like he's _Fenton_. That isn't how these things work.

Dash calls half the football team and several other cheerleaders and they all go bowling instead. He doesn't invite Paulina. She's guaranteed to hear about it from some of the girls, and she'll get the message.

Except according to them, Paulina's been acting weird with them too.

"She had like some kind of run-in with that ghost kid," says Lisa. "She's been acting kinda loopy ever since."

"Like, besides that whole fling with Danny," Star clarifies, at Dash's flat look. She lowers her voice and leans closer, a whoof of cherry body spray rolling over him. "You know those crazy ghost postcards and plastic junk they've started selling at Elmer's, for tourists? She goes over there, like, every day to see if they have any new Inviso-Bill stuff. She's got like a _shrine_ to him in her locker."

Which is not even an exaggeration, as Dash first tells himself it must be. He sneaks a peek on Monday between English and History. There are pictures, drawings, news clippings, keychains, even a weird little mobile.

It's…_extremely_ creepy. Creepy enough for Dash to wonder if that ghost kid did something to Paulina to mess up her brain or something, because this isn't really the Paulina he knows.

This is a Paulina who's infatuated with a ghost.

And the ghost kid is just that, a ghost. According to the pamphlets that Fenton's crazy parents are always handing out, ghosts don't have feelings like people. They're just shadows of who they were. Also gross and dead, and mostly out to kill or control people. He's pretty sure ghosts aren't interested in dating humans. Paulina will get over this weird little obsession, Dash figures, just like she got over that weird little thing with Fenton. This whole weirdness thing just isn't her style.

And besides, he's _Dash Baxter_. She can't resist him for long.

Except she doesn't. Get over the ghost kid, that is.

And the more Dash's paths cross with the ghost kid's, the more the confidence he gained from those pamphlets unravels. Danny Phantom, as he finally starts calling himself, is actually really cool. Dash never gets much of a chance to talk to him, like Paulina always seems to be doing somehow, but he sees him plenty. The ghost seems to spend most of his time haunting the school, evidently with the express goal of protecting Casper High.

But he's still so remote, still so very…ghostly. It's not until Dash has that crazy accident at the FentonWorks, when he's supposed to be whipping Fenton's butt into shape for the fitness tests, that he really has an opportunity to interact much with the hero of Amity Park.

And once he gets over the whole being-tiny thing, and the _oh my God it's Danny Phantom_ thing, Dash finds himself blown away not by the ghosts' powers or creepiness or …deadness, but how _not-dead_ he seems.

Phantom might as well be some kid from school. He seems to know Dash, certainly knows more about him than Dash can claim to know about the ghost, talks to him practically like an equal. There's something indefinably familiar about him, that makes him feel deceptively nonthreatening, that actually makes Dash forget he's even dead until his eyes glow or he throws an energy ball and he remembers, startled, _oh yeah. Ghost._

It's so cool. And so awful.

Maybe no unfeeling ghost could be interested in a human girl, but Danny Phantom doesn't seem to fit the stereotype. After it's all over and Dash is brooding over his last few text conversations with Paulina (funny, but so frustratingly platonic), he thinks that Phantom totally seems like enough of a non-dead person to fall in love with Paulina.

And who wouldn't?

He doesn't mean to mention it to her, because it's hard enough to make Paulina _stop_ talking about Phantom without bringing him up. But the next morning before class he's hanging out at her locker and trying to talk to her and her mind is just obviously a million miles away, so he blurts,

"So I took down an evil ghost with Phantom this weekend."

And just like that, her blue eyes are focused right on his, the most interested and eager he's seen her in weeks and weeks.

Paulina quizzes him intently, in a conversation that soon resembles an interrogation more than an actual conversation. At first Dash is more than happy to tell her all about it at first (perhaps exaggerating his part in the whole thing, just a smidgeon). But her brows curl down farther and farther and her perfectly glossed lips twist more and more as he tells her all about the robot ghost and the giant mouse and climbing stairs and pizza cheese (when did Amity Park get so weird that this became believable?), until finally she snaps impatiently,

"Did he mention _me_ at all?"

"No," Dash scoffs. "We were kinda trying not to die. Well, or whatever," he amends. He supposes Phantom can't become _more _dead, no matter how alive he seems.

"Oh," Paulina says quietly, disappointed. Then she perks right back up again. "Well, I suppose a gentleman doesn't kiss and tell. Of course he wouldn't want to discuss me with you."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?" Dash demands, stomach falling abruptly. There's no way she and Phantom are already actually in a relationship, right? If nothing else there's no way Paulina wouldn't have bragged to anyone that would stand still long enough to listen.

"Nothing I expect a little boy like you to understand," she says patronizingly.

Oh, so _that's_ how it is, is it?

"You're delusional, Paulina," Dash snaps. "He's cool, but he's a ghost. He's totally beyond you. He probably doesn't even know you _exist_."

_He's dead, but I'm here, and alive!_

Paulina just rolls her eyes, shuts her locker, and turns on her heel, like it's not even worth taking the time to argue with him.

Dash's knuckles crack as he watches her flounce off down the hall, through the crowds of kids. The queen of Casper High doesn't even look back, collecting a pocket of cheerleaders as she goes and chatting like everything is normal. Like _she's_ normal. He wants to scream in frustration, or better, take his frustration out on something. Or someone.

As though on cue, the last human guy Paulina showed any romantic interest in chooses just that moment to walk by with his loser friends.

At least something's going right.

"Hey, Fenturd!"

It doesn't hurt that, if you ignore the wimpiness and general loserishness of the kid, Fenton actually looks a little bit like Phantom. And though he'll feel guilty about it later, especially since Phantom just saved his life _again_ only yesterday, it feels good to pretend for just a moment that it's the ghost hero of Amity Park he's shoving into the wall.


End file.
